Battle of Fleurus (1815)

The Battle of Fleurus (17 June 1815) was a minor battle of the Hundred Days of the Napoleonic Wars. General Louis-Michel Letort de Lorville, the commander of the Imperial Guard's dragoons, led an attack on the Prussian I Corps and inflicted heavy losses, but was mortally wounded.

Battle
During the Hundred Days, general Louis-Michel Letort de Lorville offered his services to Napoleon, who accepted and put him in command of the dragoons of the Imperial Guard. On 15 June, at the moment Napoleon gave the order to attack elements of Ziethen's Prussian I Corps (hidden in the Fleurus wood), the Prussians began to retire. Impatient to see this corps escaping, Napoleon ordered his aide-de-camp Letort to take four service squadrons of the Guard and charge the enemy vanguard. Letort immediately charged in pursuit of the Prussian infantry, pushing off two infantry squares and wrecking one whole regiment, but fell mortally wounded by a bullet in the lower stomach and died two days later. His name is engraved on the north face of the Arc de Triomphe.